FIELD OF THE INVENTION
The invention relates to a static mixer having a plurality of deflection elements disposed in a flow duct.
Static mixers are generally installed in pipelines or in other flow ducts and serve to distribute substances that were previously introduced into the pipeline or into the flow duct, as homogeneously as possible in a flow medium. It thus enables different previously introduced gases, for example, to be mixed together. Liquid or powdery substances are also thereby able to be uniformly distributed in a gas current. In addition, the use of static mixers is also possible in liquids.
Known static mixers include one or two deflection elements, which are generally triangular metal plates, that are anchored more or less obliquely in the flow path (as is the Balke Durr publication Sonderdruck C56, from VGB Kraftwerkstechnik H8/1983, pages 676 to 678). Such deflection elements produce violent vortices, which result in an intensive intermixing of the gas current and all added components, downstream. However, it is a peculiarity of such static mixers that the complete intermixing of the components is only achieved at a sufficiently large distance behind the static mixer or behind the deflection elements. That distance amounts, in gaseous media, to approximately 10 to 20 times the diameter of the pipe. That results in there having to be a sufficiently large amount of space present behind the deflection elements before connecting the succeeding structural elements, to which the mixture is to be fed. However, in a large number of industrial plants, that space is only very tightly dimensioned and is available in an inadequate measure.
A static mixer has also already been disclosed, in which a plurality of small deflection elements are disposed in a plane perpendicular to the axis of symmetry of the gas duct. Using such static mixers, a good mixing of the gases having been previously jet-sprayed into the gas current or substances introduced therein is already able to be achieved at a relatively short distance from the deflection elements. However, it is a peculiarity of such static mixers, having relatively small deflection elements, that local concentration differences can be equalized relatively well and quickly. Unfortunately, however, wide-scale concentration differences, for instance between two opposite sides of the flow duct, can only be equalized therein in a very unsatisfactory manner (see German Petty Patent Application G 87 00 259.0).